Operation Compass

• 1. Introduction

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  Operation Compass began on the night of the 9th of December 1940 with a force of about 31,000 soldiers, 120 guns, 275 tanks, and sixty armoured cars advancing through the Egyptian desert toward an Italian army more than twice its size. Lieutenant-General Richard O'Connor, commanding the Western Desert Force, had planned what was officially a five-day raid. What unfolded over the next two months would end with more than 130,000 Italian and Libyan prisoners in British hands, the near-total destruction of the Italian 10th Army, and a British advance of several hundred miles across Libya. How did a modest raiding force accomplish something so far beyond its original mission? What made the Italian position so brittle, and the British one so resilient? And what went wrong at the very moment of total victory?

• 2. An Army in the Sand

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  Marshal Rodolfo Graziani took command of Italian forces in North Africa after Governor-General Italo Balbo was killed by friendly fire in June 1940. Graziani inherited a force with a fundamental problem he stated plainly: his large non-mechanised army could not reliably defeat a smaller but fully motorised British force. After drawing reinforcements from the 5th Army in Tripolitania, his 10th Army fielded the equivalent of four corps, with four corps headquarters and multiple infantry divisions spread across Cyrenaica and western Egypt. The Maletti Group, the main motorised unit, had been formed at Derna on the 8th of July 1940 from seven Libyan motorised infantry battalions, Fiat M11/39 tanks, L3/33 tankettes, and supporting artillery. On the 29th of August, a separate Libyan Tank Command was organised with three groups, though the Italian tanks were outmatched by the British Cruiser tanks equipped with the Ordnance QF 2-pounder gun.

  When the Italians advanced into Egypt in September 1940, they covered roughly sixty miles in three days before halting near Sidi Barrani. There they built five fortified camps, stretching from Maktila on the coast south through Tummar East, Tummar West, and Nibeiwa to Sofafi on the escarpment. The camps were not mutually supporting: gaps between them were wide enough to allow a force to pass through undetected. General Pietro Maletti, commanding at Nibeiwa, received a warning from a reconnaissance aircrew late on the 8th of December that an attack was imminent. He was never informed of it.

• 3. The Five-Day Raid

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  General Archibald Wavell wrote to Lieutenant-General Henry Maitland Wilson on the 28th of November 1940 that the operation should be planned as a raid but designed to exploit success. Secrecy was extreme: the training exercise held from 25 to the 26th of November used replica targets near Matruh, and the troops were told a second exercise would follow. They did not know the operation was real until the 7th of December, when they arrived at their jumping-off points.

  At dawn on the 9th of December, the 11th Indian Infantry Brigade with the 7th Royal Tank Regiment attacked Nibeiwa from the north-west, which reconnaissance had identified as the weakest sector. General Maletti was killed in the fighting. Nibeiwa fell the same morning. The attack on Tummar West followed after the 7th RTR refuelled and artillery bombarded for an hour. Tanks broke the perimeter and infantry followed twenty minutes later. Tummar East fell largely by nightfall. Meanwhile, Selby Force, built around the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards, moved up from Matruh with the maximum troops for whom transport could be found. Maktila was bombarded by the monitor and a gunboat, though the 1st Libyan Division filtered through Selby's positions and escaped toward Sidi Barrani.

  On the 10th of December, the 16th Infantry Brigade advanced in lorries to attack Sidi Barrani itself, supported by the divisional artillery and the 7th RTR. The town fell by nightfall. By the 11th of December, with the 4th CC.NN. Division surrendered and the 1st Libyan Division overrun, the only Italian positions remaining in Egypt were the approaches to Sollum and the area of Sidi Omar.

• 4. Bardia and Tobruk

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  By the 15th of December, Sollum and Halfaya Pass were in British hands. Fort Capuzzo, inland at the end of the frontier wire, fell to the 7th Armoured Division that same month. The WDF had taken large numbers of prisoners and captured quantities of equipment while suffering relatively modest casualties. The 7th Armoured Division then concentrated south-west of Bardia, waiting for the 6th Australian Division to arrive.

  Major-General Iven Mackay's 6th Australian Division attacked the Italian XXIII Corps at Bardia from the 3rd to the 5th of January 1941. The assault opened at dawn from the west, where the defences were known to be weak. Sappers blew gaps in the barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes, then filled in the anti-tank ditch with picks and shovels. Australian infantry and 23 Matilda II tanks of the 7th RTR overran the initial defences. The 17th Australian Infantry Brigade pressed south to a secondary line known as the Switch Line. On the second day, the 16th Australian Infantry Brigade cut the fortress in two. On the third, the 19th Australian Infantry Brigade drove south, supported by the remaining six Matilda tanks, and the southern sector fell. The northern Italian garrison then surrendered to the 16th Brigade and the 7th Support Group. About a similar number of prisoners were taken along with medium tanks and hundreds of motor vehicles.

  On the 6th of January XIII Corps surrounded Tobruk, defended by XXII Corps under General Enrico Mannella. After a fortnight's blockade, on the night of 20-the 21st of January, British ships led by Terror, captained by Hector Waller, bombarded the port. On the morning of the 21st of January the 2/3rd Australian Battalion quickly breached the Italian defences. By the evening half of Tobruk had been captured. On the 22nd of January Generale the garrison commander surrendered after Mannella had already been taken prisoner earlier that day.

• 5. The Cut-Off at Beda Fomm

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  In late January 1941, British intelligence learned that the Italians were retreating along the coast road from Benghazi. Rather than follow them north of the Jebel Akhdar mountains, the 7th Armoured Division was sent south of the range, through the desert via Msus and Antelat, to cut the Italians off. The 6th Australian Division simultaneously pressed the Italians from the north along the coast road. Because the terrain slowed the tanks, Lieutenant-Colonel John Combe was sent ahead with a flying column of wheeled vehicles, later called Combe Force.

  Late on the 5th of February, Combe Force reached the south of Benghazi and set up roadblocks near Sidi Saleh, roughly north of Ajedabia. The leading elements of the 10th Army arrived just thirty minutes later. Through 6 and the 7th of February the Italians attacked repeatedly, trying to break through the roadblock. With British reinforcements arriving and the Australians pressing down from Benghazi, the remnants of the 10th Army surrendered. From Benghazi to Agedabia, the British took large numbers of prisoners and quantities of equipment. The 10th Army commander, General Giuseppe Tellera, had been killed in action on the 7th of February.

  The battle east of the Jebel had already given a foretaste of coming difficulties. On the 24th of January, the Babini Group attacked the 7th Hussars with ten to fifteen of the new M.13/40 tanks. The 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, complacently ignoring signals for help, eventually arrived, caught Italian tanks sky-lined on a ridge, and knocked out seven M.13s. The British lost a cruiser and six light tanks in the exchange. The Italians at Derna showed comparable resolve, with rearguards of the Babini Group cratering roads, planting mines, and conducting several skilful ambushes that slowed the pursuit. Derna was not occupied until the 29th of January.

• 6. Desert Flanks

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  While the main battles swept up the coast, smaller actions were fought deep in the Saharan interior. The oasis of Giarabub, south of Sollum, was attacked in January 1941 and captured in March by the 6th Australian Cavalry Regiment and an Australian infantry battalion. The oasis of Kufra, much further south on the far side of the Great Sand Sea, was attacked by Free French forces from French Equatorial Africa, working alongside Long Range Desert Group patrols. Kufra fell in March 1941 and became the new LRDG base the following month.

  At Murzuk, south of Tripoli, a patrol of the new Long Range Patrol Unit and a local sheikh rendezvoused near Kayugi with a small Free French detachment in January. The combined force attacked the base, destroyed three aircraft and a hangar, and took prisoners. The French commander was killed. The raiders then attacked three forts before withdrawing. At Jebel Uweinat, a massif at the junction of Egypt, Libya, and Sudan, an Italian garrison held landing grounds that represented the closest Italian outpost to Italian East Africa. British patrols approaching via Faya were strafed by aircraft and ambushed by armoured cars of an Italian Auto-Saharan Company, which destroyed several lorries. General Philippe Leclerc concluded a direct attack on Kufra from that direction was not viable, and the British column returned to Cairo after a journey of considerable distance.

• 7. Aftermath and Miscalculation

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  When the totals were counted, the British had taken roughly 133,000 prisoners between Sidi Barrani and Agedabia, along with 420 tanks and 845 guns. The WDF's own losses were comparatively small: killed and wounded amounting to a fraction of the infantry's strength. The RAF lost aircraft that included six Hurricanes, five Gladiators, three Wellingtons, a Vickers Valentia, and eleven Blenheims, while a far larger number became non-operational due to damage that could not be repaired for lack of spare parts.

  The success bred conclusions that would prove costly. The 7th Armoured Division decided that the Italian defensive posture had justified the British taking exceptional risks, risks that would not be warranted against German troops. A belief took hold in the Royal Tank Regiment that manoeuvre alone could win battles. The engagement with the Babini Group on the 24th of January led some to argue that armoured divisions needed more artillery, yet no serious integration of tanks with infantry or the offensive use of anti-tank guns was considered necessary. The use of small "jock columns" a motorised infantry company, a field-gun battery, and armoured cars worked well against the Italians, and the success of those columns bred exaggerated expectations.

  A week after the surrender at Beda Fomm, London ordered Cyrenaica held with minimum forces and the rest sent to Greece. The 7th Armoured Division had been operating for eight months, wearing out its mechanical equipment, and was pulled back to refit. The 6th Australian Division departed for Greece in March. The 3rd Armoured Brigade left behind in Cyrenaica had an under-strength light tank regiment, a second regiment using captured Italian tanks, and from mid-March a cruiser regiment also equipped with worn-out vehicles. German reinforcements arrived in Libya under Directive 22 of the 11th of January to form a blocking force under Erwin Rommel. On the 25th of March 1941, Graziani was replaced by Gariboldi, the same general who had commanded the 10th Army when Operation Compass began.